I never got to tell her I was sorry
by MessrsAidingMischief
Summary: Written for the 'First Sentence' challenge. Petunia never got to tell Lily she was sorry. But was is it she was sorry for?


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, despite pleading with the universe. **

**This was the product of a prompt, a lack of sleep, and wanting to avoid a 2500 word literature essay on the symbolism of the hankerchief in Othello. Because really, who sets 2500 words on that?**

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When she was nearly thirteen, my sister Petunia got her arm badly broken at the elbow. We had been riding our bikes down by the pier, racing faster and faster, trying to beat each other to the beach, when she lost control. Terrified, I listened to her scream as she hit a large rock erupting from the ground. I was unable to stop her from being hurt, but I knew that I would do everything I could to stop her getting put in that position again. I might have been younger than her, and smaller, but I knew what to do in an emergency. Wrapping my arms around my sister, I screamed as loud as I could for help, until our parents came running. They took her to the hospital and she got her arm fixed up before we went home, and a few months later you would never have known she'd been hurt. That whole time when she got hurt? Tuney didn't cry.

A few weeks after she got the all clear for her arm, I got my letter from Hogwarts. Suddenly my big sister was my deadliest enemy, and she refused to talk to me. We never went down to that pier again, never rode our bikes together again… We lost each other.

I came home from my first school year at Hogwarts, and she wasn't recognisable. My Tuney had been a tomboy. We used to wear oversized jumpers and play rugby in the mud, laughing along with some of the boys we knew from down the street. Petunia was the roughest, toughest, most dangerous of the lot. She kicked teenage boy butt by the time she was eight years old, and while most girls were colouring in Disney princesses, I was being taught how to defend myself by my older sister. Now Petunia was just like the girls she had always insulted.

At first I didn't notice the changes. They were little things- she changed her shampoo to match the one her friends used, she got her ears pierced, she plucked her eyebrows- and I wasn't concerned. That was at Christmas. I wasn't home long, so I didn't see the bigger changes that took place by the time June came around.

I walked into my living room and found Petunia sat with seven other teenage girls, wearing face masks and discussing the merits of various boys in their classes. Over the Summer I spotted the bigger things. She waxed her legs, highlighted her hair, wore make-up every single day, went dancing with her friends in teenage clubs and giggled senselessly over cheesy chick flicks. I'd lost my Petunia before I turned thirteen years old, and I never saw her again.

When I needed to talk to somebody about James Potter, I talked to my mom instead of my older sister. When I needed advice on what to wear on dates, I talked to Hestia instead of my original role model. When I needed to tell somebody that James proposed, I no longer even thought about telling Petunia, whereas a few years earlier, she'd have been the only person I'd ever want to let know.

Mum died of cancer when I was nineteen. Dad had been shot during a robbery when I was eighteen. Petunia was the only family I had other than James, and she couldn't even look at me without cringing. She was disgusted by who I was, and to be perfectly honest, I couldn't blame her. She called me a freak, and countless times I believed her. James told me not to let her get me down, but how couldn't I? My older sister hated me, when I loved her more than anybody else in the world.

Petunia married Vernon. I wasn't invited to the wedding.

Petunia had a son. I wasn't even told she was pregnant.

It didn't upset me any longer, because when she gave birth, I was deep into my own pregnancy. I had Harry, and my life had a new focus. Suddenly I didn't cry myself to sleep with the knowledge that Petunia hated me, because now I could focus on my Harry and my James. My family. My _real _family. Admittedly I wasn't actually sleeping all that well (Harry cried a lot), but that was besides the point. For the first time since I got that letter, I was happy.

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When I was nearly thirteen, my sister Lily helped me when I got my arm badly broken at the elbow. This is the story I found written in the journals Dumbledore sent me shortly after I convinced Vernon to let Harry stay. My sister died when she was twenty-one years old, leaving behind her only son. I chose to take him in, because I know if our roles were reversed, she would have done the same for me.

My deepest regret? I never got to tell her that I was sorry for making her scared the day that we lost control of our bikes down by the pier.

I love you Lily, wherever you now may be.


End file.
